


Building A Home of Hair And Straw

by moemachina



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 19:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13107279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: And now, knotted among all his familiar desires, here he found a new one, woven partly out of obligation and partly out of curiosity.And partly out of loneliness, of course.Yes, Diaval thought.I am needed.





	Building A Home of Hair And Straw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tooth_and_claw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooth_and_claw/gifts).



> The title comes (in slanted form) from Marguerite Young, "The Raven" (1943).

It took Diaval time to adjust to having a human body. What was this tender skin? What were these brittle fingernails? What was this heavy skull on top of this frail neck?

In particular, it took Diaval time to learn how to walk and walk quickly -- and when one was following in Maleficent's wake, one was _always_ in a hurry -- without collapsing in a heap of elbows and knees. 

"'s not my fault," he protested the third time he tripped over the uneven ground and went head over heels and heard Maleficent go _tsk-tsk_ in her human way. "These _legs_ are all wrong." 

"Stop complaining," she said, already some way ahead on the path. "And come on." 

He pushed himself to his feet and hobbled irritably after her. Every single one of his toes was in pain, and he did not see the point of having any of them. "I don't see how humans get any place with these bodies." 

"It's because they don't try to balance themselves with their _wings_ ," Maleficent observed tartly. "You're still acting as if you've got heavy masses of feathers on your back and can use them to catch yourself. But instead you're just throwing your shoulders around every time you overbalance, and so of course _down_ you go." 

"Am not," Diaval said sullenly. 

"Yes, you are," Maleficent said calmly. "I did the same thing after I lost my wings. So I know." 

Diaval looked at her sidelong. "Mistress, you used to be a bird?" he asked in puzzlement. But what kind of bird? Not a raven, surely. An eagle? She was severe enough to be an eagle. Or a hawk? Or a--

Maleficent paused and turned to stare at him. "What?" 

"Maybe an osprey?" Diaval was whispering to himself. 

"Good lord," she said. "No, you simpleton. I was never a bird. Surely you know who I am?" 

Something in her tone of voice suggested that Diaval should not respond with yet another type of bird. So instead he closed his human mouth (so strangely fleshy and soft, and yet so full of disconcerting teeth) and did his best to look wise and knowledgeable. 

Maleficent, arching one dark eyebrow, did not look convinced.

"Of course I know who you are, mistress," he said. And then, to be safe, he added, "Everyone knows who you are, mistress." 

"May the forest preserve us," she muttered. "I am Maleficent, a fairy of this realm. One of the greatest fairies." 

"Of course," Diaval said promptly. "As everyone knows." 

Maleficent rolled her eyes. "Come along, then." 

He walked behind her, trying to be careful about where he put his feet and how he bent his knees. "I thought fairies were littler than you are, mistress. I think I've eaten some fairies. They were crunchy, like moths." He stopped as it dimly occurred to him that she might be offended to hear about the murder and consumption of her brethren.

Instead, she threw back her head and gave a fluting laugh. "Yes," she purred, "I should imagine that they were." 

It had been on the tip of Diaval's tongue (so large, so wet) to promise not to eat any more of her fairy cousins, but he swallowed that promise in the face of her amusement. Instead, he asked, "Where are your wings now, mistress?" 

It was as if a candle had been snuffed out: her warmth and laughter vanished in a moment. "They were stolen," she said shortly. 

Diaval frowned. "But...how does--"

"Ugh," Maleficent said. "Are all ravens this voluble? Or are you the chatty exception? Regardless, this conversation bores me. You are a bird again." She snapped her fingers. 

The transformation rushed across Diaval, and it felt...not precisely painful, but _itchy_ and peculiar, as if he were molting out of season. And then suddenly a sensation of relief and familiarity as he folded into his correct shape: sleek feathers, taloned feet, hard beak. 

He spread his wings and rose in the air. _Good_ , he thought. _Good good good_. 

He wanted to climb until he reached the high thermal winds overhead; he wanted to skim along the surface of the earth and brush the tips of the waving grass. He wanted to hunt for warm mice and fat grasshoppers and all the blackberries he could find. He wanted to forget teeth and fingers and heavy bones and a sluggish heartbeat. 

He wanted to build a nest. He wanted to find a mate. He wanted to warm the eggs and to feed the hatched fledglings and to fall upon any predators who approached with a sharp beak. 

He wanted-- 

"Don't go far," Maleficent said, absently. "I will have need of you soon."

And now, knotted among all his familiar desires, here he found a new one, woven partly out of obligation and partly out of curiosity. 

And partly out of loneliness, of course. 

_Yes_ , Diaval thought. _I am needed._

* * *

"Where exactly did you come from, Diaval?" 

Diaval was in the middle of trying to figure out how to build a bed, but he looked up at Maleficent's question through strands of sweaty hair. Maleficent had made him into a man for this task. _Best to have a full set of thumbs_ , she had said, gazing into the distance. _You'll need them to make me a bed. And a proper bed, mind you. I want a four-poster affair._

Maleficent was currently lounging against a toppled wall covered in lengths of wisteria and sweet pea and honeysuckle. (It had taken Diaval more than a week to locate vines that she deemed sufficiently fragrant enough for the task.) She had a goblet of wine in one hand and a slim book in the other. 

"Come from?" Diaval repeated. "Nowhere in particular." 

Maleficent raised an eyebrow. "Everyone comes from _somewhere_ , Diaval." 

Diaval grimaced. The bed was not going well. He had flown far and wide -- poking his head into a dozen cottages and peering through glass windows into the boudoirs of aristocrats and staking out the campsites of soldiers and slipping into taverns and inns and pubs -- and he had been confident that he understood the basics of human beds, despite their infinite variety. Now, however, he was beginning to second-guess himself. 

Despite his best efforts to lash together lengths of wood into something resembling a rectangle, the whole thing kept slipping apart. 

"I suppose you didn't just manifest out of empty air," Maleficent was saying. 

"No," Diaval said, a little tiredly. "No. I was hatched in a nest on the edges of this forest. When I was a fledgling, a storm came and shook our tree, and the rest of my brothers and sisters fell from the nest and were lost. When I was old enough, our parents pushed me out and I flew north. Sometimes other ravens flew with me, but eventually they always left me to build their nests and lay their children." 

Maleficent gave a tinkling laugh. "But not you, little Diaval? You weren't called to build a nest yourself?" 

Diaval shrugged as he wound thick string around the joints of the would-be bed. "I still had parts of the world to see. I wasn't ready to settle down." 

Maleficent's voice was faintly mocking. "What, there was no lady-wife begging you to become domestic? No pretty bird to tempt you away from your wandering ways?" 

Diaval grimaced. "No," he said, tying off a length of string in a clumsy knot. "When we take a mate, it is for life. And I have not yet met my mate." 

"Oh, _dear_ ," Maleficent sighed, leaning back against her tree bough. "How touching to see a corvid commitment to True Love. I suppose your obligation to me will prevent you from ever meeting your heart's other part. I suppose," she said lazily, "you must _resent_ me." 

Diaval shot her an irritated glance. "No," he said. "I know my obligations. My parents raised me properly from the shell, and I wouldn't want anyone to think any different. I know what is involved in a life-debt." 

"Poor little Diaval," Maleficent said, drawing out each word in a luxuriant drawl. And then, in an entirely different voice, she said, "Heavens, what _have_ you built?" 

"It is...it is a bed?" Diaval said hesitantly and hopefully. 

Maleficent was leaning forward with a scowl on her face as she peered at his handiwork. "It appears to be in the shape of a pentagon, Diaval. And there is no mattress; it's just wood and...string?" 

"To hold it together," Diaval said promptly. 

Maleficent rolled her eyes. "Trust you to build me a bed that looks just like a bird nest." 

It was on the tip of Diaval's tongue to tell her that, had he chosen to build her a nest, it would have been much nicer than this rickety object. It would have been sturdy and wide and lined with the softest human hair and-- 

But instead, he said, "Why do you need a bed, anyway? Do you ever sleep?" 

Maleficent's eyes flashed. "I will have a bed because I am a _queen_ now, and queens have _beds_." She took a deep breath. "Do it again. And do it better." 

Diaval bowed his head. His hands hurt and his back was sore and his head ached, and he hated this huge clumsy body, but all he said was, "Mistress. As you wish."

* * *

Diaval had not realized how broody and egg-hungry he had gotten until he started tending to the cursed babe. 

She was a rather homely specimen, he supposed, with her enormous head and splotchy skin. But her cries had all the furious hunger of a fledgling waiting to be fed, and the short strands of fine hair on her head reminded him of the beginning of a chick's growth of feather-down. 

Maleficent had not precisely commanded him to tend to the babe. But she had not precisely forbidden it either. 

And so he began feeding the pink creature. He carried blossoming flowers into distant barns and soaked them in buckets of milk left overnight to separate into cream, and then he flew back with the wet blossoms. She sucked them hungrily. As her teeth started to come in, he brought branches bursting with blueberries into her room and carefully detached each berry with his beak to drop, one by one, into her waiting mouth. He fed her bits of pear and kernels of corn and snips of crunchy radishes and -- on one special occasion, when he had been lucky in his foraging -- the clean and glistening segments of a particularly juicy earthworm. 

The seasons turned, and the child grew sturdy and red-cheeked, and her three guardians congratulated themselves on what a good job they were doing, and Diaval felt himself growing straggly-feathered and weak-beaked from stress and exertion and lack of sleep. 

"Do you regret it?"

Diaval gave a start. He had just winged his way back from the cottage and had been wearily grooming his feathers and wondering if he would be able to nap for an hour or two before Maleficent summoned him. He had not noticed her approach. 

"Do you regret it?" she asked again, standing below his tree. "Do you wish to stop?" 

He shuffled nervously on the branch and _cawed_ in a vague way. 

"Think of all the sleep you could be getting," Maleficent murmured. "Think of all the little beasties you could be hunting, the places you could be flying, the things that you could be doing, instead of feeding that drooling little loaf of flesh." 

Diaval made a curious wriggling motion with his head and back and wings, and it took him a moment to realize -- with a strange kind of horror -- that he had instinctively tried to _shrug_ , as if he had shoulders, as if he were a _man_. 

"No?" Maleficent was saying. "No regrets? Not a single one?" 

Diaval watched her warily. 

"Very well," Maleficent said easily. "But since you have all this _energy_ and all this _spare time_ , I have the _teeniest_ little request to make. Now, my dear Diaval, have you ever seen a newt before? And, perhaps more importantly, have you ever seen the _eye_ of a newt?"

* * *

Of course Maleficent sent him to spy on her enemies: the gloomy king in his high castle, the three nattering fairies in their cottage, the talking bear with aspirations of grandeur who lived under a hill and spent most of his time asleep, and the bog-witch in the southern swamps who was always threatening to devour Maleficent. 

( _I am not that easy to eat_ , Maleficent had said with a laugh after the first time Diaval anxiously reported the bog-witch's threats. _And I rather think I'm more than she could possibly chew_.)

But in addition to reporting back on all those who threatened and feared Maleficent, Diaval also took it upon himself to report on the others who lived near the borders of Maleficent's realm: the hive of bees who swarmed to follow a new queen, the fox who had recently given birth to a litter who whined and yipped deep within their den, the shepherd who was trying to teach himself how to play the flute (with predictably disastrous results), and the enormous one-eyed trout who lived in the mill pool and who solemnly evaded all attempts to hook or net him. 

"My dear Diaval," Maleficent said, "I cannot honestly say that I care in the _least_ that the potters over the hill are trying to marry their son to the cooper's daughter." 

"Yes, yes," Diaval said absently. "But the thing is, the cooper's daughter doesn't want to marry the potter's son. I think she's going to run away." He was pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back; the act of pulling his shoulder blades together approximated the feeling of wings, and so he often unconsciously adopted the pose while in his man-form. 

He could not know that the posture made him look a little like a ponderous school-teacher pontificating in front of his pupils, and Maleficent had never elected to inform him, but she often watched him stride back and forth with a slight smile hovering at the corner of her lips. 

"What makes you think the cooper's daughter seeks to escape this union? Other than the obvious reasons, of course, of wanting to avoid being shackled to a man who smells like clay and having to please his mother and bear his children and listen to him belch after every meal." Maleficent raised a hand to cover a delicate yawn. "I suppose I may have answered my own question." 

"It is because she stole her father's second-best suit of clothes," Diaval said. "And I watched her take them down to the creek and put them on and walk around in a heavy-footed clumping sort of way." Diaval paused. "And then I realized that it was a _disguise_."

"A cunning deduction," Maleficent murmured. "And what did she do then?" 

"Then she hid them under a big rock by the creek and went back home," Diaval said. "But there's a festival in two days. I think she'll use the confusion to slip away." 

"Mmmmm," Maleficent said. She had begun cleaning her fingernails. "Tell me, what is this potter's son like?" 

Diaval made a face. "He has an annoying laugh. And when he sees me, he throws rocks." 

"A veritable villain," Maleficent said. "And the cooper's daughter? No rocks from her?" 

"No," Diaval said. "But I do not think she enjoys being a cooper's daughter." 

Maleficent was silent for a long moment -- long enough for Diaval to think that she had grown bored with the conversation and was now occupied with other things that she would not deign to explain to him. 

Diaval leaned against a tree trunk and wondered whether she would remember to turn him back into a bird tonight. He hated having to go to sleep in this man-form; he could never get comfortable and then, once he finally managed to get to sleep, he was always plagued by strange and unsettling dreams. 

"Diaval," Maleficent said suddenly, "what did you do with that cloak of invisibility? You know, the one that the fool on that white horse was carrying when he came into the forest to challenge me? Do you remember?" 

Diaval indeed remembered: he had been perched on Maleficent's shoulder as she laughed gaily and rained lighting bolts upon the would-be champion until his white horse finally bolted, carrying away the stunned rider but leaving behind a satchel of magical items. Maleficent had discarded most of the pendants and potions as "quackery and nonsense," but she had finally smiled when she reached into the bag and pulled out a rippling length of _something_ : the cloak of invisibility. 

"I left it inside the trunk of that dead oak tree," Diaval said. He did not add that he had almost lost the cloak after he put it down to crack open some tasty nuts and then, reaching back to where he thought he had left it and not finding it and then having to desperately hop to and fro to search for an invisible object by touch alone while trying not to think of what Maleficent would do to him if she found out...

Eventually, he had found it and gratefully stuffed it inside the dead oak tree. Maleficent had never known how close he had almost come to disaster.

"Very good," Maleficent said. "Then here is what I want you to do, my dear Diaval..." 

And so it was, two days later, when the cooper's daughter crept out to the creek to retrieve her father's second-best suit and prepare to run away, she was startled to find a brown-paper satchel, carefully wrapped in string, alongside her father's jacket and trousers. She untied the package and pulled back the paper and found inside a rippling length of _something_. 

The cooper's daughter did not waste time asking stupid questions. She knew how fairy tales worked, and she could recognize a cloak of invisibility when she saw it. So after she put on her father's clothes, she threw the invisibility cloak over her head -- and so vanished from the sight of the raven perched on a nearby tree. 

"I guess she left," Diaval reported that night to Maleficent. "Although I don't know for certain. I mean, I couldn't see her, as you know." 

"I think it is safe to surmise that she left," Maleficent said. "I doubt that she put on that cloak and then lay down to take a nap. How have the coopers reacted to the loss of their daughter?"

"I don't think they've noticed yet," Diaval said. 

"Ah," Maleficent said. "Then they did not deserve to keep her."

Diaval glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. He could have asked why she cared at all about the coopers or the potters, whom she had never seen or met, whom she knew about only through Diaval's stories. He could have asked why she had suddenly chosen to help the cooper's daughter. He could have asked why she had extravagantly and inexplicably chosen to give away the cloak of invisibility. 

But instead he asked, "Do you want to hear about the one-eyed trout who lives in the mill pond? He had a narrow escape this week." 

"Diaval," Maleficent sighed languorously, "the amount which I care about fish in ponds, mill-adjacent or otherwise, could be measured in a thimble."

"He is a very cunning trout when it comes to worms on hooks," Diaval continued doggedly, "but this week, the weaver's children brought a bucket to the mill pond..." 

Maleficent rolled her eyes. But she did not leave or change the subject or transform him, and so Diaval kept speaking about the one-eyed trout. 

She watched him pace -- his hand clasped behind his back -- and something like a smile curved the edges of her red mouth.

* * *

Time passed. Seasons turned. The fox had more red-furred litters in her den. The talking bear occasionally emerged from under his hill in order to make proclamations about his own ursine greatness. The one-eyed trout wandered the bottom of the mill pond. The cursed babe in the fairy cottage grew, by degrees, into a cursed girl. 

One year passed into another, again and again. The cooper's daughter did not return. 

"My dear Diaval," Maleficent said. "A question occurred to me today."

"Yes, mistress?" Diaval said without looking up. He was in the middle of darning a sock. 

"How long do ravens tend to live? On average?" 

Diaval's needle paused. "I don't rightly know, mistress. We don't reckon such things as men do." He made a neat knot with his thread and bit off the remainder. "Why do you ask, mistress?" 

"No real reason," she said absently. "I was just wondering when you were going to die, Diaval." 

"Oh," Diaval said. 

"It's terribly hard to keep track of mortal life-spans," Maleficent said. "I mean, they all tend to be brief, as a rule, but today I found myself thinking, is Diaval like a little mayfly? Or is he rather more like a large tortoise? Will he live for a century and grow greener and more gnarled with each year? Or will he collapse with a croak next week?" 

Diaval had slipped his hand into the sock in order to inspect the hole he had repaired. "Well, I shouldn't say I was like a mayfly, or I would have been a long time dead by now. But I suspect I'm not a tortoise either. Perhaps ravens are somewhere in-between, mistress." 

"Hmm." She was standing beside him, and Diaval looked up to find her studying him with narrow eyes. "How will I be able to tell if you are in a state of decline, Diaval? What do elderly ravens look like?" 

Diaval grimaced. "Haven't had the pleasure of meeting many elderly ravens, mistress, but I think we all look mostly the same." 

"Well, that isn't much help," Maleficent said. She leaned down, and before Diaval knew what she was doing, she had seized a handful of his hair in her hands. "Do you suppose all of your hair will go white? Do you have any white hairs yet, Diaval?" 

"Hey, now," Diaval said, trying to pull back from her, but her grip was like iron. She was tugging at the hair on the top of his skull. The pressure was not hard, but it was not exactly gentle either, and the feeling was _strange_.

(Later, much later, as he perched on a tree branch and restlessly remembered this moment, he would think that the sensation was not unlike how he felt when he was perched alongside Maleficent on her throne as she presided over her fairy court and she would distractedly stroke his feathers. The touch of her fingers tugged at his wings in a semi-painful way, but it was not _exactly_ painful, and Diaval never protested the pressure of her hand.) 

Abruptly, she released him. "See here, Diaval. If you start feeling poorly, you must tell me immediately. Don't hesitate." 

"Am...am I supposed to tell you," Diaval said hesitantly, "so that you can find a cure for me? Or so you can return me to a youthful condition?" 

Maleficent shuddered. "Hardly, my dear Diaval. I want to know so that I can find your replacement. I don't want my affairs to be unduly interrupted by your inevitable but unpredictable deterioration into death." She pursed her lips. "Although I don't know that I'll do a raven again. Maybe some other bird? Perhaps a dove?" 

"A dove?" Diaval exclaimed in disgust. "You'd pick a measly, moaning, insipid little dove over a majestic raven?" 

"I might," Maleficent said mildly. "I feel as if I'd suffer far less insubordination from a dove." 

"A _dove_ ," Diaval said to the sock around his hand. "Given the choice, an addle-brained _dove_ rather than picking a raven. I swear--" 

Maleficent was no longer listening. Instead, she had cocked her head to the side and was gazing in the distance. "Oh, bother," she said. "What are those three doing?" And then, without a word of farewell to Diaval, she was striding away into the night. 

Diaval watched her go with narrow eyes. "Well," he said to his sock hand. "There she goes. And here I am. Stuck in this body for at least another day." 

He brought together his fingers to give the sock a mouth that opened and closed. " _Oh, Diaval_ ," he said on behalf of the sock in a squeaky voice, " _I'm so sorry! I totally forgot to give you back your real shape before I left!_ " 

"It's quite all right, mistress," Diaval said to the sock. "I understand, mistress. You have pressing concerns, mistress." 

" _Oh, Diaval! You're such a faithful and loyal servant! I'm glad I chose you to be my servant! I definitely would have been disappointed if I had chosen a dove to accompany me!_ " 

"Oh, mistress, you are too kind." 

" _Oh, Diaval, how can I ever reward you for your endless service?_ " 

"I need no reward, mistress. To see you smile is reward enough.

His sock made a slightly discomfited _moue_ with its mouth. " _Now, Diaval, that can't be true. What do you want, Diaval?_ ”

"Well, mistress, for one thing, I don't think we should live in the ruins of this castle any longer. It's drafty, and the stones are hard, and it's impossible to be comfortable." 

" _What a good idea, Diaval! Where should we live?_ " 

"We'll find a good tree for me, and then, next to it, we'll build a little house, just big enough for you and the girl." 

" _The girl?_ "

"Yes," Diaval said. "She'll be there too, where we can keep an eye on her all the time. After you revoke the curse, of course." 

The sock regarded him mutely, and Diaval stared down at it for a long moment. 

And then, with a sigh, he removed the sock from his hand and replaced it with another one from the hamper beside him. This sock had an enormous hole in its heel. 

Diaval's needle flashed.

* * *

Time passed. 

Eventually, grudgingly, certain introductions were made. 

"It's good for neighbors to know each other," Diaval observed blandly. 

Maleficent had been watching Aurora chase a will-of-the-wisp, but she looked up at his comment. "Oh? How sententious. My dear Diaval, you are sounding more like a man every day." 

Diaval gasped in genuine hurt. "Mistress! I am _not_!" 

Across the field, Aurora was laughing helplessly as she ran after a glimmering cloud.

* * *

Sporadically, it occurred to Aurora's three guardians that she might need a certain degree of education, and so she had learned (in fits and starts, whenever the three fairies remembered that they were supposed to be teaching her something) how to read and make figures and cross-stitch and create a pie crust. 

In order to assist her literacy, they had assembled a library -- but being fairies and fundamentally uninterested in cold type on dead paper, it was a library haphazardly assembled from whatever books or pamphlets they could buy from the travelling peddlers who stopped by their cottage. As a result, Aurora's little library was heavily dominated by seed catalogs, followed by religious tracts for a cult of sun-worshipers who lived far to the south. 

However, among the yellowing volumes was one that Aurora loved particularly and unreservedly: an illustrated compendium of animals. 

"Look, Diaval," she said, thrusting the open book toward him. "See, this is a raven! Just like you!" 

Diaval gingerly held the book and peered down at the page where it lay open. The squiggly dark figures covering the page meant little to him, but in the middle of the page, no bigger than the length of his thumb, there was the careful engraving of a black bird with bright eyes. 

"What does it say?" he asked. 

Her golden hair spilled across his hands as she bent over the pages. "It says that ravens are...from the genus Corvus...in the wild, ravens can live...for more than two decades…”

"Oh," Diaval said. "Does that sound like a long life to you?" 

Aurora looked up at him eagerly. "It sounds like a _really_ long life to me," she exclaimed. “I don’t know hardly anyone who has lived that long!” 

"Oh," Diaval said. "Good."

* * *

Diaval did not love being a man, with all his awkward limbs and unsettling dreams. 

Diaval hated being a dog, salivating and hairy and nasty. 

Diaval had mixed feelings about being a horse, so powerful and so careless. 

Diaval might have enjoyed being a dragon -- under other circumstances.

* * *

The room was still smoldering around him when he came to, and there was the distant sound of sobbing. 

Diaval tried to sit up--

\--Diaval tried to flex his wings--

\--and almost immediately let himself fall back to the ground that a thump that rattled the walls. 

He felt all wrong. And Diaval was used to feeling all wrong -- to waking up to the wrong alignment of fingers and scales and paws and hooves -- but this was a _wronger_ feeling than usual.

The sobbing continued. 

Slowly, painfully, Diaval cracked open one eye and focused it on the source of the noise. 

“Aurora,” he said, or tried to say, but his jaw was all wrong, and it came out as a hoarse shriek. 

She dropped her hands to reveal her tear-stained face. “Diaval?” she whispered. 

Diaval regarded her. She seemed a great deal smaller than usual. 

“Diaval, can you hear me?” 

Diaval moved his head in a weary nod. 

Aurora approached him slowly and placed her hands against the bottom of his jaw. “Diaval, I...I don’t think you should move. Just stay...stay still, okay?” 

Patchily, certain memories were starting to creep back into Diaval’s mind. A castle filled with iron. A kiss of true love. A transformation into a dragon. A set of liberated wings. A great deal of dislodged masonry from the ceiling overhead. A sharp pain across his back, and then blackness, and then Aurora’s sobs, and heaviness pressing down upon him.

There was no sign of King Stefan’s soldiers. 

There was no sign of Maleficent. 

Diaval uttered a cry. 

“Shh, shh, it’ll be all right,” Aurora said as she stroked the bottom of his jaw. “I think...I think Maleficent went out to see about my father, but she’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” 

Diaval’s claws rasped against the floor as he tried to push himself forward, and Aurora cried out. 

“No, Diaval, no, _stop_ , you shouldn’t move, you’ve...you’ve been hurt, I think. You’ve been hurt pretty bad.” 

Diaval did not feel any pain. Diaval wanted to find Maleficent. Diaval could not manage to move. 

“Shhh,” Aurora said, crying. “Shhh, it’s all right. Pretty bird. You’re a pretty bird.” 

There was the sound of beating wings overhead and then Maleficent’s clipped tones: “What’s this, then?” 

“Maleficent!” Aurora scrambled to her feet. “You’ve got to help Diaval. He’s been hurt real bad, Maleficent.” 

Maleficent landed lightly on her feet and looked up at Diaval. “Yes. I can see that.” 

“You see all that black stuff?” Aurora asked. “I think that’s his blood, Maleficent. That’s his blood _everywhere_.” There was a tremble in her voice. 

“Indeed,” Maleficent said, cocking her head to one side. 

“What are you going to do?” Aurora asked. 

“Well,” Maleficent said, “I can’t say he’ll be terribly manageable at this size. Into a raven if you please, Diaval.” She snapped her fingers. 

Diaval had felt no pain as a dragon, but he found the pain waiting in his raven body -- as if the injury had suddenly been made legible, comprehensible, familiar. 

He flailed on the ground, uttering a pathetic cry, as he realized that both his wings were broken. 

“Stop that,” Maleficent said as she stooped to pick him up. “ _Stop_ , Diaval.” 

Diaval wailed. 

“Oh, what are you doing to him, Maleficent? What are you doing? He sounds terrible.” 

Maleficent took a deep breath and snapped the fingers of her free hand -- and both Aurora and Diaval fell silent and unseeing as they floated up into the air. 

“This is just a temporary measure,” she told their unhearing forms. “I promise. It’s just that I can’t deal with all this _fuss_ on top of everything else.” 

And then she felt silent, because tiny black beads of blood were beginning to drift around Diaval’s feathered body.

* * *

Diaval woke up in pain, but it was that type of pain that was distant and endurable: the itch of a healing bone, the ache of a fading bruise. 

His eyes opened, and it took him a moment to realize that he was in the body of a man. 

“Oh. You’re awake, I see.” 

He was lying on the ground and swaddled in blankets. He looked over to see Maleficent seated on a broken plinth. Her face was framed by her magnificent tawny wings. 

“You’ve also decided not to die, I see," she said. "I approve. Because it was decidedly tiresome having to save you.” 

Diaval blinked slowly. 

“It was particularly obnoxious because creating the potion to save your life required a number of tedious and obnoxious tasks, but because _you_ were incapacitated, I was forced to undertake these tasks personally.” She shuddered. “I had to parley with the one-eyed trout who lives in the mill pond so that I could learn the location of a potent herb. I had to wake up that silly bear under the hill and listen to him rant for an hour before he told me how to soak the necessary poultices. I even confronted that wet witch in the southern swamps and forced her to tell me how long to boil the water for your medicine. And that, Diaval, is an afternoon of my life that I will never get back.” 

“My apologies,” Diaval croaked. “What happened to your dove?” 

Maleficent paused. “I beg your pardon?” 

“What happened to the dove that you were going to choose? When I died?” 

Maleficent looked down at her hands. “Oh. That. Well, my dear Diaval, I weighed my options, and I thought about how much time it would take to _train_ a new servant, and I decided that it was more efficient to heal you. At this particular juncture, of course. ” 

“I see,” Diaval whispered. 

“Besides, Aurora would have been devastated,” Maleficent added. “She feels a strange fondness for you, you know.” 

“Indeed,” Diaval whispered. 

Maleficent stared at her hands for another moment and then, with great deliberation, she raised her head. 

“And I suppose,” she said, slowly and reluctantly, “that she is not alone in that regard. I would have been sad as well.” She stood up. 

“Mistress.” 

“Stefan is dead,” she said. “I...I didn’t exactly kill him, but I am responsible for his death. And when he died, I thought, what a shame. What a shame that he had become such a twisted, inward-facing little man. What a shame that he could never tell the truth about anything. What a shame that he knew so little about his own heart.” 

Diaval said nothing. 

“The ironies are not lost on me,” Maleficent said briskly. “But even so. I am...resolved to avoid that fate. I want to tell the truth. I want to tell people what I believe. I want to live openly. I want to be able to...well. Anyway. It would have made me sad if you had died. I wanted you to live.” 

Diaval steadily regarded her face. 

“And one other thing,” Maleficent said. “Without my intervention, you _would_ have died. Which means that you can consider your life-debt paid off. You are no longer my servant. You are free, Diaval.” 

“No,” Diaval said. 

“Yes,” Maleficent said, in a voice more gentle than any he had ever heard from her. 

“No,” Diaval said again. “You just said that you didn’t want to have to train a new servant. Think of the effort.” 

“I think,” Maleficent said gravely, “that I will be equal to the task.” 

“No,” Diaval said for a third time. 

“And why not, my dear Diaval?” There was an odd, unfamiliar tone to Maleficent’s voice. 

“Because...because this is my home.” 

Maleficent glanced at the black ruins surrounding them. “Well, you can have it, then. I am planning to reside in a new location, I think. A _softer_ location.” 

“No,” Diaval said, staring in her eyes. “My home is with you. You are my home.” 

Maleficent paused, and then she uttered a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, Diaval, my dear, what sentimental nonsense, what--” 

Diaval had closed his eyes. “No,” he said, and he had already lost count of the number of times he had said the word, as if it were a magical talisman he was summoning. 

“No,” he said again, “because you just told me that you wanted to be honest. That you wanted to know your own heart.” He opened his eyes. “You know your own heart, Maleficent.” 

Something flickered across Maleficent’s face. 

“I think you know my heart as well,” Diaval added. 

Maleficent’s eyes were a green so bright that they seemed to glow. “It is normal for servants to fall in love with their mistresses. Just as hostages fall in love with their captors.” 

Diaval regarded her. “Your enemy is dead. You survived. And now you can live.” 

Maleficent threw her head back and laughed: a long, delicious, slightly diabolical laugh. 

“Will it be that easy?” she asked, sauntering toward him. “Will it be that simple? Will it be that painless?” She crouched beside Diaval. “Nothing in my life has ever been that sweet, my dear Diaval.” 

“There is a first time for all things,” Diaval said. 

“Perhaps,” she said, and then she bent her head and kissed him. 

And Diaval thought with a startled jolt, _Finally, human mouths make sense!_


End file.
